27. Ignatius
twenty-seven
Ignatius
Just a little longer.
That had become Iggie’s mantra as he crouched in the mouth of the cavern, watching the battle unfold before him. Fully half his skeletons had already crumbled to dust, and he was trying to be smarter with the others by keeping them in constant motion, dodging nimbly around their far less agile foe.
A burst of writhing tentacles, shimmering with the faintly ethereal purple energy of the Void, caught a skeleton before he could command it away.
The lashing tendrils lifted the undead into the air and effortlessly ripped it apart.
Iggie grimaced as another of the small bubbles of awareness in his mind winked out. One less undead to hold the line.
Just a little longer…
Still no sign of Alistair. Iggie assumed that the paladin had stuck to the plan and was even now awaiting the eldritch abomination’s arrival at Singer’s Rest. It was pure luck that Iggie wasn’t doing the same.
He’d set off for town before first light, determined to join Alistair whether the paladin still wanted his help or not.
En route, however, guilt had racked him over his abandonment of the townspeople, and he’d decided to swing by the designated evacuation point first to ensure everyone had made it there safely since it was on the way. Good thing that he had.
By the time he’d reached the caverns, the golem had already torn a chunk out of the ravine and had begun working on the cave proper.
Fortunately, some enterprising villager—Liliana, if Iggie didn’t miss his guess—had thought to collapse the tunnel mouth to buy them more time.
Without her cleverness, he might have arrived too late.
As it was, the creature had cleared enough of the rubble to expose the tunnel entrance and had appeared close to breaking through.
When he’d heard the townsfolk within shouting for help, Iggie had rushed to their aid, commanding his undead into the fray while he took up position in the mostly cleared mouth of the passage.
He’d attempted to direct his skeletons to all target the same spot along the monster’s crystalline hide, but to his frustration, they lacked the coordination to obey with any amount of consistency.
Eventually, he’d given up on damaging the golem and instructed his undead to instead focus on buying as much time as possible for the villagers to flee deeper into the caves.
Roaring its frustration loud enough to tremble the stone around Iggie, the golem flailed wildly about itself, managing to clothesline another skeleton and snap it in half.
Iggie winced. At this rate, he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. Still, he would remain until the last of his undead had crumbled to dust. Every minute he fought earned the people of Singer’s Rest a little more time to escape.
Footsteps scuffed off stone behind him, and he turned to find a cluster of grim-faced villagers approaching from deeper in the tunnel with Liliana at their head. Each of them gripped a makeshift weapon, from rusty tools to old swords that likely hadn’t been swung in decades.
Unease roiled through him. With their own dooms approaching, had a mob formed to exact their idea of ‘justice’ against him for his perceived crimes?
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Liliana studied him, her expression hard.
“We’re here in case you fail, necromancer.
These caverns may be large with plentiful harmonite deposits, but the passages are also dark, narrow, and twisted together.
Erys and Kelvin are doing their best to keep the people calm and organized as they search for another way out, but… ”
Iggie’s stomach plummeted. But it isn’t going to be enough.
Some might manage to escape, but unless they continued to delay the golem, the bulk of the townsfolk would still be here, trapped inside, when it came for them.
Based on what Erys had said of the ritual that conjured it, the abomination wouldn’t stop—not until it had achieved its distorted objective.
He fixed his attention back on the fight. “Then, I guess we’d better hold.”
A long pause. “Aye,” Liliana said at last. “I guess we’d better.” She started to retreat to where the villagers she’d brought had gathered deeper in the tunnel, then hesitated, glancing at him. “You know, all things considered, you’re not so bad. For a necromancer.”
Despite the grim situation and the likelihood of impending death, he burst into laughter. “You’re not so bad yourself. For an arrogant, egotistical artisan.”
She gave him a savage grin before settling in at his side to watch the battle.
Every now and then, she let out a brief grunt when one of his undead managed a particularly impressive dodge or suffered a grievous blow.
He’d sent all he had into this battle except for Marlon and Cynthia.
The waiting villagers cast wary glances toward the pair of skeletons, but at least they didn’t shy away. A definite improvement over the norm.
One by one, his remaining undead fell. The harmonite golem was simply too strong, its voidflame tentacles too unpredictable.
The play of speckled blue light across the worked harmonite that gave the beast form might have been beautiful if not for the pervasive sense of wrongness that permeated the entire creation.
The closer Iggie tried to peer at the splintered crystals, the more his brain ached at the contorted way they jutted together, all impossible angles.
Before long, he had only three skeletons left fighting, then two as the golem smashed another to splinters. Iggie took a deep breath and caught the assembled villagers—twenty or so in total—shifting nervously.
This was it. His undead had delayed the golem as long as they could.
Soon, the creature would be upon them, their last desperate battle beginning.
He could see it in the villagers’ resigned gazes, Liliana included—they knew they wouldn’t be walking away from this.
Yet, that didn’t stop them from clutching their weapons and straightening their backs.
Hopeless or not, they intended to sacrifice their own lives to give the rest of the town a better chance to escape.
His own chest tightening with determination, Iggie moved to join them only for Liliana to grip his arm and shove him back. He stared at her in shock. He’d thought they’d reached a sort of rapport. Did she really loathe him that much, even now?
Liliana fixed him with an unreadable look, holding his gaze as she gave a small, nearly imperceptible nod.
“While I appreciate the sentiment, there’s no sense in you dying here with the rest of us.
Go and find the others.” She glanced at Marlon and Cynthia, mild distaste curling her lip, though she tried to hide it.
“Perhaps your…companions there can aid with the escape efforts. We’ll take it from here. ”
Iggie opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, a sudden burst of blinding light blanketed the front of the cavern.
All around him, people screamed and shielded their eyes, shouting out warnings or bemoaning this terrible new power the golem had brought to bear.
Iggie, however, would recognize that golden light anywhere, and though its presence had once filled him with trepidation, he now felt only a swelling joy.
“Alistair!” he cried.
“I’m here!” came the reply a few seconds later from somewhere beyond the golem blocking the cave’s entrance.
Warmth spread through Iggie at the familiar voice.
Shadow and shade, there was so much he wanted to say to the paladin.
Even if this reunion proved as fleeting as the other moments they’d shared, even if Alistair left on the morrow to pursue his next mission, Iggie would happily cling to whatever lingering connection he could.
But not yet.
The monstrous aberration spun to face this new threat with another stone-shuddering roar, Iggie’s final pair of skeletal defenders forgotten in the face of this more satisfying opponent.
Awe gripped Iggie, his breath catching as the paladin—his paladin—clashed with the eldritch horror.
He’d only seen Alistair fight once, and that had been at night in the middle of a raging blizzard atop loosely packed snow.
Here, in the light of day and on firmer footing, Alistair seemed unstoppable.
Dawnflame blazed across his armor, leaking from his body and eyes in golden wisps. A still-brighter concentration of it enveloped his sword, and each blow he struck to the golem’s crystalline hide conjured an eruption of azure sparks amid a burst of radiant flames.
If Iggie had thought his skeletons nimble before, Alistair made dodging the monster’s lumbering blows look downright easy. The paladin met each lashing tentacle with a counterstrike that sent them sizzling to the snow, where they melted away in bursts of violet voidflame.
Yet for all Alistair’s glorious might, Iggie could tell that the battle was far from won. The golem’s impenetrable skin appeared unblemished despite Alistair’s blows, and while the paladin’s strength remained unyielding, Iggie knew his dawnflame would only last so long.
Iggie clenched his hands at his sides, desperate helplessness clawing up his throat. He spun toward Liliana, who still stood beside him watching Alistair fight with an expression of utter awe. “We need to help him!”
Liliana blinked dazedly. Giving her head a quick shake as if to clear it, she glanced at him, furrowing her brow.
“Like I said in the council meeting, worked harmonite is nigh impervious unless you hit it just the right way to shatter the entire crystal. That intrinsic durability is part of what makes harmonite so desirable. Once you stabilize its latticework of natural energies, its internal structure grows rigid, allowing it to maintain its…”
She trailed off, pursing her lips, and Iggie felt a stab of hope. “What? What is it?”